diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'content')
| -rw-r--r-- | content/entry/paying-close-attention-to-experience.md | 21 |
1 files changed, 5 insertions, 16 deletions
diff --git a/content/entry/paying-close-attention-to-experience.md b/content/entry/paying-close-attention-to-experience.md index b906ae0..b479fdc 100644 --- a/content/entry/paying-close-attention-to-experience.md +++ b/content/entry/paying-close-attention-to-experience.md @@ -2,7 +2,6 @@ title: "Paying Close Attention to Experience" date: 2022-02-05T00:00:00 draft: false -makerefs: false --- # Explaining Color to a Blind-From-Birth Person I was watching this video of a child trying to explain to a blind-from-birth man what color is like. Everybody knows it's an impossible task and inevitably the child soon learns this out as well. @@ -11,14 +10,14 @@ One can explain to a sightless person which objects have which colors, the wavel No amount of facts about color seems to add up to the experience. If given the choice between knowing every fact about a color and having the ability to see it, I don't know anybody who would choose the former. Knowledge just doesn't replace experience. -I'm reminded of a relevant quote from the movie Good Will Hunting which gets at the heart of knowledge versus experience. It's fairly lengthy so I'll just link to the clip[1]. +I'm reminded of a relevant quote from the movie Good Will Hunting which gets at the heart of knowledge versus experience. It's fairly lengthy so I'll just link to [the clip](https://yewtu.be/embed/6vXbUPnWA1U?local=true). # Explaining Color to a Sighted Person Everybody knows you can't explain color to a blind person but people don't realize you can't really describe color to sighted people either. Think of a young child. Someone else says the name of the color and points to it. After some repetition, the child learns the names of common colors. During this process, no information about color is communicated to the child. The sighted child can already see color. They only learn which words corresponds to which colors. So how does one know that the child sees the same red and that they aren't just using the same word to talk about a different color? -How would one communicate color itself rather than just the agreed upon name of the color? It seems impossible. Vsauce has an excellent video about this titled "Is Your Red The Same as My Red?"[2]. He wonders if we can ever communicate what a color is. +How would one communicate color itself rather than just the agreed upon name of the color? It seems impossible. Vsauce has an excellent video about this titled "[Is Your Red The Same as My Red?](https://yewtu.be/embed/evQsOFQju08?local=true)". He wonders if we can ever communicate what a color is. Philosophers like Daniel Dennett suggest that color might not be ineffable. Perhaps we just don't have the language to communicate color yet. If only we had precise enough words, using sufficiently many of them, we could communicate the experience of seeing color. I'm skeptical, but for now color is ineffable in every human language. All we can do is agree on common words. @@ -37,7 +36,7 @@ If you ask someone who lacks any understanding of anatomy how their hand moves, We know the brain is composed of billions of neurons and synapses. Yet conscious experience offers no clue. Isn't it strange that subjective experience doesn't hint at these objective anatomic realities? # The Explanatory Gap -Although we may know certain processes in objective reality correspond to certain experiences, we don't know why. Why does pain feel the way it feels and not some other way? Some philosophers think we can never fully account for this. They think the explanatory gap[3] cannot be bridged. Others insist it can. +Although we may know certain processes in objective reality correspond to certain experiences, we don't know why. Why does pain feel the way it feels and not some other way? Some philosophers think we can never fully account for this. They think [the explanatory gap](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/#Explangap) cannot be bridged. Others insist it can. # Paying Close Attention to Experience These questions are fascinating for philosophers, but the nature of one's own consciousness is in principle of interest to everybody. I think people believe it's not interesting only because they don't/can't pay close enough attention to notice their experience. @@ -81,9 +80,9 @@ When people talk about "the final frontier", they're usually talking about place There's all sorts of unconscious mental machinery going on in the background that we're not normally aware of. A fish living in water its whole life doesn't know what water is. However, some humans are aware of the unconscious mental machinery, because they lack it. ## Unconscious Mental Machinery -Some people's fusiform gyrus[4], the part of the brain responsible for facial recognition, is impaired. This causes face blindness[5], or the inability to recognize facial features. It's hard for most of us to even imagine not having that ability because it's not something we notice. Nonetheless facial recognition is something we're all doing. +Some people's [fusiform gyrus](https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusiform_gyrus), the part of the brain responsible for facial recognition, is impaired. This causes [face blindness](https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosopagnosia), or the inability to recognize facial features. It's hard for most of us to even imagine not having that ability because it's not something we notice. Nonetheless facial recognition is something we're all doing. -People with Autism[6] lack the ability to identify others' emotions. Most humans have emotion recognition as a metaphorical built-in API[7]. If autistic people can identify others' emotions at all, they do it through very deliberate thinking. It happens at the level of conscious effort rather than through the metaphorical API. +People with [Autism](https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism) lack the ability to identify others' emotions. Most humans have emotion recognition as a metaphorical built-in [API](https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/API). If autistic people can identify others' emotions at all, they do it through very deliberate thinking. It happens at the level of conscious effort rather than through the metaphorical API. Think about language. You effortlessly convert your thoughts into speech. And you easily understand others' speech. Neither of these are trivial tasks and yet you do them without even trying. These processes happen "underneath" conscious awareness. @@ -108,13 +107,3 @@ Well don't assume. Instead, pay attention to experience and accept what you find Above all, trust yourself. If what I say here doesn't match your subjective experience, then disregard me. I don't know what it's like to be you. What's true about my mind is different from what's true about yours and you'll only learn about yourself through careful observation, not by reading my journal. I'm just trying to inspire you into taking the first step and hopefully following all the way through till the end. "No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path." - Siddharta Gautama - - -Link(s): -[1: Good Will Hunting Clip](https://yewtu.be/embed/6vXbUPnWA1U?local=true) -[2: VSauce: Is Your Red The Same as My Red?](https://yewtu.be/embed/evQsOFQju08?local=true) -[3: Explanatory Gap](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/#Explangap) -[4: Fusiform Gyrus](https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusiform_gyrus) -[5: Prosopagnosia](https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosopagnosia) -[6: Autism](https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism) -[7: API](https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/API) |